Welcome to the J.J. Abrams presidency. That insane ‘08 campaign was only the beginning. Does anyone know what is going on? The nation’s fate is utterly uncertain, like the folks running around on that island. Obama exudes a feeling of wonder, a sense that he could save the day at any second but strings you along like mid-season episodes of Lost.
The ambiguous tension, wandering, yelling, and constant twists yield no real game changes. No sense of resolution. (Health care reform passed, but doesn’t take effect for years, and the GOP is vowing to Repeal and Replace it.) Now we seem to have traveled back in time to 1994 (GOP poised to take back congress). The Others are running around swearing the end is near if we don’t change course (angry mobs and TEA Partiers).
So what now? The only way to top all this insanity would be a tie in 2012 presidential election…which would be a disaster. Imagine the 2000 Election mess, but amidst a gigantic recession. Imagine those Florida mobs, but the size of TEA Party mobs: Democrats being accused of a Nazi Socialist takeover, Republicans being called racists of a second confederacy. The entire country would start coming apart at the seams and descend into a civil war. Man, this always happens when elect skinny Illinois lawyers to the presidency!
Plus, we should note that congress decides a tie. So a Democratic congress would pick Obama. But if the GOP takes over congress, they could Repeal and Replace him with their candidate, who we’ll call Mitt McPalin Huckalenty, from Grand Old Tea Party Ticket. Madness…
Still, there are countless other possibilities, which brings me to the point of this meandering post. We live a moment that doesn’t exist. Day after day, America toils aimless through a 24-hour news cycle of hopeless absurdity. Democratic and Republican favorability shoots up and down in the polls like the stock market, while snake oil salesmen try desperately to make sense of it all and sell the story to you, usually hyper-analyzing fleeting fads and trends until something important (or at least scandalous) comes up.
None of it matters. An entire year of angry mobs berating congressmen about hypothetical health care bills felt like an eternity, but it will all be a footnote in history. And the public sees each footnote documented in detail on cable news and the internet. As we are flooded with information, we depend on the Mainstream Media to filter it for us, but they’re the ones saturating our brains with distractions and disinformation. Year and year, emotions build daily as partisan anchors educate their side on every piece of dirt they have on the other side, and non-partisan anchors stand back spinelessly, eager to split the difference. Viewers are then turned loose to have ill-informed debates with each other, or to cast ill-informed votes.
The point is that emotions are running high over things that hardly matter or are hardly understood. We are extremely informed yet essentially ignorant. I don’t know what the solution is. All I can say is take a deep breath and remember that, much like Lost, most of this madness is a mere interlude before we find out what really happens. The signing of the health care bill may turn out to be landmark event, but most of the time we live in a moment that doesn’t exist.
The ambiguous tension, wandering, yelling, and constant twists yield no real game changes. No sense of resolution. (Health care reform passed, but doesn’t take effect for years, and the GOP is vowing to Repeal and Replace it.) Now we seem to have traveled back in time to 1994 (GOP poised to take back congress). The Others are running around swearing the end is near if we don’t change course (angry mobs and TEA Partiers).
So what now? The only way to top all this insanity would be a tie in 2012 presidential election…which would be a disaster. Imagine the 2000 Election mess, but amidst a gigantic recession. Imagine those Florida mobs, but the size of TEA Party mobs: Democrats being accused of a Nazi Socialist takeover, Republicans being called racists of a second confederacy. The entire country would start coming apart at the seams and descend into a civil war. Man, this always happens when elect skinny Illinois lawyers to the presidency!
Plus, we should note that congress decides a tie. So a Democratic congress would pick Obama. But if the GOP takes over congress, they could Repeal and Replace him with their candidate, who we’ll call Mitt McPalin Huckalenty, from Grand Old Tea Party Ticket. Madness…
Still, there are countless other possibilities, which brings me to the point of this meandering post. We live a moment that doesn’t exist. Day after day, America toils aimless through a 24-hour news cycle of hopeless absurdity. Democratic and Republican favorability shoots up and down in the polls like the stock market, while snake oil salesmen try desperately to make sense of it all and sell the story to you, usually hyper-analyzing fleeting fads and trends until something important (or at least scandalous) comes up.
None of it matters. An entire year of angry mobs berating congressmen about hypothetical health care bills felt like an eternity, but it will all be a footnote in history. And the public sees each footnote documented in detail on cable news and the internet. As we are flooded with information, we depend on the Mainstream Media to filter it for us, but they’re the ones saturating our brains with distractions and disinformation. Year and year, emotions build daily as partisan anchors educate their side on every piece of dirt they have on the other side, and non-partisan anchors stand back spinelessly, eager to split the difference. Viewers are then turned loose to have ill-informed debates with each other, or to cast ill-informed votes.
The point is that emotions are running high over things that hardly matter or are hardly understood. We are extremely informed yet essentially ignorant. I don’t know what the solution is. All I can say is take a deep breath and remember that, much like Lost, most of this madness is a mere interlude before we find out what really happens. The signing of the health care bill may turn out to be landmark event, but most of the time we live in a moment that doesn’t exist.
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